


Rise/Fall

by pettyashecky



Category: Christian Bible, Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: M/M, i make no guarantee of its quality, this went from dumb tweet to fic in 6 hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 04:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18439442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pettyashecky/pseuds/pettyashecky
Summary: Lucifer will not let the boy splinter on the sea after a century of putting himself together.





	Rise/Fall

**Author's Note:**

> [The Twitter thread responsible.](https://twitter.com/pettyantics/status/1116592776890568705)

Icarus leaps from the window and the world is _wide._  He wants, oh, but he’s always wished, and now the wistfulness is washed away by the sheer desire for the earth and ocean that spreads out before him, as far as he can see. There, in the distance, a flock of birds call, and he watches as a gust of wind separates their huddle and just a moment afterwards the wind hits _him,_  too, and the breeze strikes him as the realisation that they are all under the same sky and above the same water and it would take an instant, only a collection of instants, to be _there_ and not _here_ as if the desire itself could move him; and now he is where the birds were and the birds are where he was and the world has _moved_ , without anyone doing anything, and it will continue to do so.

Daedalus calls from behind, a squawk of a shout, and Icarus twirls with a gentle pivot of an arm to watch his father flap into the updrift. Oh, but he _is_ a pretty thing, effortless and light, and he knows this now as he bears witness.

Icarus glides, and the ocean glints, and in the water beneath he sees the most glorious glow - but he fears the depths, for people drown in there, for his father would sit in the window of their tower and look out across the waves and he would waver, one foot on the window-frame, until Icarus would call out or the king’s men would knock at the door and he would turn back, relief and cowardice warring on his face - so Icarus will not move towards the water, and he closes his eyes and stretches his spine up and draws his wings around to shoot himself up and away from the cresting waves.

There is heat on his brow, and gold behind his eyelids, and Icarus opens his eyes, and he sees the sun, and the fingers of light reaching down.

* * *

Lucifer watches.

His attention is drawn to the heavens, as it is most days, and he watches the swirl of the clouds across the sky and wonders how they could be read, whether the secrets forbidden to him now are scrawled across the ceiling of the world. It would be a bitter, spiteful thing, to do something like that, and far below anything _He_ would do, Lucifer knows, but to see bitterness and spite in every facet of the world is as much Lucifer’s role as being _above_ it is His.

The clouds part, and a shadow streaks through in a ray of sun, and for a moment Lucifer is indignant - this is his right, _his_ story, and he has battled for it before and will again. He goes for his sword, and then looks again, and he sees that it is Icarus, falling.

Icarus. Icarus. What does he know of this Icarus? Lucifer dives into an infinite depth and sees Icarus soaring, laughing, carefree, ravenous. He sees Icarus ascending, reaching, alone, foolish and disrespectful and desperate, and he knows Icarus will be his, hedonist as he is, will pay for every tiny ounce of joy that he eked out of his captive life. Icarus already is his.

But he will not let the boy splinter on the sea after a century of putting himself together.

* * *

lucifer catches Icarus’s soul from his body and lets his flesh splash across the waves.

Icarus stares up at him with wide, wide eyes.

“I could have lived,” he whispers. “I might have lived.”

Lucifer holds him, and the wax is still sticky on his hands, and stray seagull feathers have alighted in his hair. He says nothing.

“My _father_ ,” Icarus mutters, and then turns his face into Lucifer’s chest to cover his eyes. Daedalus hovers overhead, watching his son sink, wings nearly too heavy to beat. “My father,” Icarus weeps, and he is cold and cool to the touch.

Lucifer watches Daedalus mourn, and he wonders what he is expected to do. Should he call the wind this way, or call it that way, bring the waves higher or calm the sea - but he thinks perhaps he is tasked with doing the cruellest thing, and the cruellest thing would be leaving Daedalus to choose his own fate. He cradles Icarus closer, and he carries Icarus home.

* * *

Icarus is proud, once he can be. He did not stumble into his fate; he flew into it arms outstretched, and if this is his consequence, well, the memory of the sky spanning the world will sustain him for as long as he needs it to. He lies in the bed Lucifer laid him in, and he stares at the ceiling, and he refuses to walk now that he has soared.

Lucifer remembers how it felt to fall, and he marvels at the light that stays in Icarus’s eyes even now.

“Would you bring me things, if I asked for them?”

Lucifer does not... _deliver._ “I can make it so that you can create the things that you would like.”

He cannot bring himself to touch Icarus, not again, not after he placed him in the bed and pulled away from his cool, sticky skin. The chill is too wondrous, down here, and too tempting. Oh, maybe Icarus is his, but Icarus is not for _him_ , too much the sun and the sky and the salt that his body is part of now.

Lucifer waves a hand and now Icarus can conjure to his heart’s content, but he makes himself no things, only fragments of things, and he pieces them together with his fingers.

* * *

Icarus builds clouds, and waves, and birds, and whales, but no towers. Never buildings, never people, and he never enters the worlds he makes. He sits up in bed and sculpts each piece, and pushes it into place, and he watches it until it is right.

He builds bird after bird after bird, first in large pieces, wings and heads and legs, and then finer pieces, and then fragments of bones dressed in skin, fitting feathers into place one at a time, watching the bird flap awkwardly about the room and then refining the wing shape on the next bird, shorting the wings or lengthening the feathers or changing the angles of the primaries or secondaries.

He builds the birds bigger and bigger and bigger and then he just builds the wings, nothing of wax or string but now flesh and bone and feather.

He has nowhere to fly to - he dares not leave his room, dreads the thought of leaving the palace, suspects what might be out there and what he might have been saved from. But he will not spend however long this might be bound to this bed, and he will not let his feet touched the accursed ground.

Icarus wishes the wings onto his back and they are there, and they will do what he wants with his thoughts. He asks them to lift him, and they do. They take him out of the bed, and up to ceiling, and there he stays, no wind to keep him in the air - no, now it is entirely his work, and the thick air fights against his every wingstroke. He is in the air, and he stays there until the wings give out.

_They did not make anything better,_ he thinks, on his way back down.

Lucifer does not catch him when he falls, this time, and it _hurts_ when he hits the floor, and he does not deserve any of this.

Lucifer stands at the door and looks down at him, half awe, half disgust.

“I had to try,” Icarus says, and he turns his back on Lucifer. He starts to drag himself back into the bed with his arms, but then Lucifer is on his knees, holding Icarus’ hand firmly in his own.

“Tell me what it was like,” Lucifer pleads. “Tell me what it was like to fall.” All he can remember is the pain, and the dark, the storm clouds and the earth-shattering voice, but Icarus fell in a beam of sun, under a blue sky, and the world fell silent in mourning around him. “How is it you still want to try?” he asks, because he is wise enough to learn a lesson.

Icarus’ eyes meet his, and they burn with that cool fire, with that golden sunlight. “For a moment, I believed that I could touch the sun,” Icarus says, voice full of pity. “You always knew you would not.”

* * *

 “When you caught me,” Icarus’ voice is tiny; he has not spoken of this before; “before I knew I was dead, I looked to your face, and I thought I saw the sun.”

“They used to call me the morning star,” Lucifer says. “I heralded the sunrise, or would sing it to sleep, but I never could draw too close.”

“Then the sun was missing out on a wonder,” says Icarus, and he turns his face up.

 

* * *

 

“I could make you a prince,” Lucifer says, quietly. “There are those among us who fly, those among us who create. We will find you a purpose here.”

“I do not think I could hurt anyone,” says Icarus, with caution. “But I think that I could stay, and tell you stories of the sky, and then I could see it again but through your eyes.”

“Are you trying to save my soul?” There is a dark laugh under his words.

“I am trying to catch it before it can settle.”

“I am well-settled here.”

“But you looked up.” Icarus reaches out one hand and takes a feather from Lucifer’s hair. “You looked up, and you rose to meet me.”


End file.
